May 2011

Social Media is a Tactic not a Strategy

It’s the headline of our times “Brand X Moves to Social Media.” It’s the hottest trend in marketing with executives from the corner offices at Coca-Cola to the front lines at the local barber shop talking up Twitter, Foursquare, Groupon and Facebook.

Since the Great Recession hit, we have been forced to do more with less and what better way to accomplish this than with social media. Compared to traditional advertising, a social media campaign is cheap. But is it effective? It all depends.

After we wrote the 2002 book “The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR” a lot of companies got excited about PR. They ran out to hire PR companies and to launch PR campaigns. This resulted in a lot of lame and ineffective PR campaigns.

Any company can run an advertisement, but with PR there are no guarantees. You can hire an agency, host an event, run a contest, pay a celebrity, launch a website, pitch reporters and bloggers alike and sometimes the media doesn’t cover it, nobody notices it, nobody tells their friends or hits the “like” button on Facebook.

And the same is true with social media campaigns. What is social media anyway? It is an evolutionary development of PR and word-of-mouth marketing. The internet has allowed people to interactively communicate in real-time, 24/7 on a global basis. Both PR and social media are tools but to be effective they need the right brand strategy first. That was the point of our book. We didn't talk about why "doing" PR was good for any brand, we talked about how PR gives new brands credibility and how to develop the right brand strategy to help make a PR campaign effective.

The goal of marketing is to get your brand into the mind of the consumer. To own a word or a category in the mind. Starbucks owns high-end coffee shop. Google owns search. Twitter owns tweets. BMW owns driving.

The first question any company must ask itself is, what does our brand stand for? Unfortunately, that question rarely gets asks. Instead, the focus is on what social media can we get into? Too many companies get PR, social media or advertising campaign all wrong. They forget that the brand strategy should come first and the execution should follow. Doing it in reverse doesn’t work.

A typical example is a headline in today’s NYT “The Tupperware Party Moves to Social Media.” The Tupperware Brands Company has decided to greatly increase its presence in social media like Facebook and Twitter. They will have a Facebook page devoted to the theme “Chain of confidence” and feature women who will be confidence counselors. The company hopes to use social media “to reach out to a younger demographic in a more interesting and dynamic way.” The goal “is to find more disruptive methods to dispel perceptions that we are your mother’s Tupperware,” said Rick Goings chairman and chief executive of Tupperware.

First thing first. What’s a Tupperware? It’s a party your mother bought plastic tubs at. Changing that perception in the mind is going to be difficult. A Facebook page and a few YouTube videos about confidence are unlikely to change that perception at all.

“Chain of Confidence” what the heck is that? Since when do confidence and plastic tubs go together? Sure, I get what they are getting at: Women who work for Tupperware gain confidence and skills. But Tupperware doesn’t own confidence; it owns plastic tubs sold direct.

Broad ideas like confidence and quality aren’t specific enough to be ownable. And even if you want own something like “great customer service,” you don’t do it with a “we love our customers Facebook page.” You do it with a specific and tangible concept like: “Free shipping. Both ways.” The concept that put Zappos in the mind and gave Tony Hsieh something to tweet about.

What Tupperware needs to do first is focus on the idea. What idea can Tupperware own in the mind? They have to start from where they are at and slowly shift that. Plastic tubs save food. People are eating at home more, bringing lunches to work and school more. I would start with that. There is also the idea of saving the environment. Instead of throwing cheap plastic containers away, you buy Tupperware and keep them around a lot longer.

Nothing is going to help overnight. The problems at Tupperware have been brewing for a longtime. And many of these ideas would have been better implemented years ago. Nothing works better than pioneering an idea or movement.

Instead, most brands muddle along and introduce brand extensions like Tupperware stainless-steel pots and pans and rush to do social media not because it makes sense for the brand but because it is the trendy thing to do today.

Marketing isn’t trendy. It’s simple.

Focus. Own a word in the mind. Then decide the tactics.

And if your brand is yesterday’s news, consider the possibility of launching a new brand.

Social media actually works the best for new brands that are (1) focused (2) appeal to a new generation and (3) have news value.

Comments

Thanks for the article. I'm newer to social media, but wonder if it really is easy. With everyone trying to capture each other's attention, I sometimes wonder who stops to listen and is there much to listen to with everyone to "rank 1" on google the simple way.

I read a good review of the book "24-Hour Customer" (http://www.strategy-keys.com/New-Market-Penetration-Approach.html) that looks at the topic from an great angle.

Social Media is not a fad, but it has become faddy in the way people are approaching it. Also agree on your 3 points, our experience says the same - New, fun brands appealing to a new generation and a clear focus. Those are the ones that succeed best in this new media.

Brands need to start viewing social media as the tools they are instead of a one-size-fits-all formula. I'm tired of brands trying to re-invent themselves for social sites instead of using them to extend their existing brand and core competencies.

With the Tupperware example, I like your starting points for them. Tupperware is famous for going direct to the customer in person-- Tupperware parties. They could think more about live, in-person, or mini 1:1 events that would reach the younger market they're wishing to target in a novel way and then use social channels to broadcast those.

And as far as offering content, there a million things other than their "Confidence" campaign that could be offered via something like a Facebook page...links to freezer-friendly recipes (with recommended Tupperware)...could target these to younger, single women or those cooking for 2, ideas for packed/commuter lunches for office types, alternative uses for tupperware, links to eco-conscious articles, money-saving ideas, re-introducing retro designs (that's trendy now with 20-30 somethings)...etc. My favorite brands to follow are the ones that offer useful information and position themselves as a helpful resource instead of one of a thousand obnoxious brands that are vying for my attention and dollars.

Not only am I a fan of your work, but I also consider being mentioned in "The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR" one of my most significant professional accomplishments. Thanks for sharing all your knowledge with the world.

It sounds to me that Tupperware is actually taking a very traditional advertising approach here - creating a "themed campaign" that has only a tertiary relationship to the brand itself.

In our branding work, we constantly run into clients who are determined to put tactics ahead of strategy. Another example would be tactics around SEO. SEO is certainly important, but without clarifying the underlying positioning strategy, creating confusion rather than connection is a real possibility.

Hi Laura,
You don't know how much Al's and yours books mean to me. I have read many of them and they have shaped my thinking of the world and business.
When you say social media is a tactic nothing can be more true. People think that social media is the only way to build reputation but there are plenty of offline and online tactics too.
I read every post of yours and learn from them.